Two San Francisco musicians who disapprove of the Bush administration have self-released a cheeky CD of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld’s press conferences set to classical music.

“The Poetry of Donald Rumsfeld and Other Fresh American Songs” includes lines such as, “There are things we know we know/We also know there are known unknowns,” from the secretary’s Feb. 12, 2002, briefing on Iraq.

The songs are performed by soprano Elender Wall, accompanied by composer-pianist Bryant Kong.

Associated Press reports that Mr. Rumsfeld himself has heard the recording.

“Someone gave me a copy of this thing, and here is this woman with a wonderful voice singing my press conference,” he said at a meeting of the Newspaper Association of America last month. “Now, if that doesn’t tell you something about the state of the world.”

Bee Gees’ degrees

Bee Gees Robin and Barry Gibb returned to their hometown of Manchester, England, yesterday to receive honorary degrees and a posthumous degree for their brother Maurice, who died last year.

The musical trio with hits over four decades received honorary doctorates in music from Manchester University, Reuters News Agency reports.

“The ceremony was completely overwhelming. … Maurice would be very proud. He was applauding as well,” Barry Gibb said.

“Maurice is looking down and thinking, ‘God, I wish I’d been there.’ He would have loved this sort of thing,” he added.

Tooling with O’Toole

Brad Pitt says the opportunity to work with Peter O’Toole for the movie “Troy” will be on his “greatest-hits reel.”

“The word highlight doesn’t do it justice,” Mr. Pitt said in a recent interview.

“Troy,” in which Mr. Pitt stars as Achilles and Mr. O’Toole plays Spartan King Priam, opens tomorrow in area theaters.

“I can’t even begin to describe what a lovely, lovely, hilarious man he is,” Mr. Pitt said, noting that at 72, Mr. O’Toole still has the energy of someone half his age.

“I went to meet him at 4 in the afternoon,” Mr. Pitt said. “We were just going to hang out for a couple of hours. I had to leave at 4 a.m. I was too tired. He was still going.”

Baghdad blogger

Salam Pax, the pseudonymous online diarist who reported from Baghdad during the war, just landed a movie deal, BBC reports.

The company Intermedia is searching for a screenwriter to adapt his book, “The Baghdad Blog.”

“He’s like a Nick Hornby in the middle of a war,” Scott Kroopf, chairman of the company’s film division, told Screendaily.com.

The often darkly funny diary began as a way for the 29-year-old architectural student to keep in touch with a friend named Raed in Jordan.

“It was just simple things about what was happening in Baghdad so he could stay in touch with what was happening,” he told BBC last year.

The blogger now writes a column for London’s Guardian newspaper.

For the folk

Folk icon Pete Seeger is leading the charge for the Campaign for Public Domain Reform, an effort to ensure that folk musicians around the world see at least a portion of song royalties.

“When a song is in the public domain and you record it, it’s standard practice in the music industry to say ‘adapted and arranged by’ whoever sings it,” Mr. Seeger, 85, told AP.

“Why let the record company keep all the royalties? They didn’t write the song.”